Canadian Music Week #3 - Tom Jackson

Friday I played bass in the house band for clinician Tom Jackson. Lori was in contact with him and we ended up being his backing band for this clinic. This was a good job. We ended up being in one of the massive conference rooms at the Fairmont Royal York. It was a huge stage and the sound guys were pros. I believe they were from Metalworks. I was secretly hoping I would bump into Omar Davis this week but I never did. Oh well.

When you look at this picture you can see my bass (yellow) to the right and you can see my pedal board directly in front of the Marshall cabinet. There's a bit of red there to see it.

One of the highlights for me though, was catching up with Craig (drummer). One of my best friends, we don't get to see each other too often with our schedules being the way they are.

Canadian Music Week #2 - The Slakadeliqs

After I finished playing Lori's show at the Supermarket I eventually made my way over to the Garrison to see live debut of The Slakadeliqs. This is a project of Slakah the Beatchild's that he put me on to at least a couple of years ago when I played with him in Detroit. I was also in the video for Love Controls the Sun for my one second of MTV glory. This is one of my favorite alt-pop projects to ever come out.

Another reason I was there was to see Ayah perform a tune with The Slakadeliqs. My wife put together her look for the evening so I had to be there regardless to pick up the accessories from Swarovski and Doc Martens' boots she was wearing. I also play with Ayah from time to time so this was the first time I saw her perform without me being on stage.

The review in short The Slakadeliqs (and Ayah for that matter) looked great and if they event was more suited to alt-rock than hip-hop it would have sounded just as great as they looked.

Here's a video I took of Call Me Your Friend from the show:

Canadian Music Week #1 - Lori Nuic

My Canadian Music Fest 2012 started off on the Thursday playing for Lori Nuic at the Supermarket. I have played with Lori and her brother Anthony for some time now and always enjoy it. Once again it gave me a change to play with Craig and Anthony Wright as well.

Lori has a new album coming out in May called Flaws of Attraction. You can check out what's going on with her on her site. Here is a picture courtesy of Janet Turner (L-R: Anthony Wright, Craig's drumstick, my elbow, Lori, Krystal, and Marcia).

Add Producer To My Credits

Saturday I got to do something that I've never done before. I got to produce the Fyahorns and the Brigade recording of "No Contingency." My job was to specifically produce the horn section. David Rudder had produced the vocals but the guys wanted me to do the horns because: a) I play in the band so I was involved in the recording process from it's infancy b) I love horns sections and soca/calypso c) my musical background is pretty strong for this kind of thing, and most importantly d) because they're good friends of mine, I'll show up if there's beer and a bucket ah dead.

I loved the experience because I got to be the boss. Being the boss is awesome. But I was a good boss as the one thing I did though was encourage open discussion on parts and takes because I wanted the horns to feel comfortable.

I'm going to assume it went well because we ended up watching videos of Destra and Japanese soca artists for a couple hours after the takes were done. My favourite clip of the evening was when we discovered this Japanese singer named Barbie who sings soca. I can't believe I knew the song, the rest of the guys couldn't either but they weren't shocked when I started singing all Rita Jones parts and tooting all the horn parts.

Here's the Japanese clip:

Good times. Apparently there's a date to be made in April for round 2.